


you'll always be (my favorite ghost)

by couragetofight



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, F/M, M/M, allusions to hiv/aids, bi!graham, mentions of minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couragetofight/pseuds/couragetofight
Summary: She was his first wife, and his first marriage, but she wasn't his first love.





	you'll always be (my favorite ghost)

She was his first wife, and his first marriage, but she wasn't his first love.

He wasn't one to fall in love at first sight. His heart worked in a different way, slowly building up the kindling, no raging fire, but not one that would ever go out either. Perhaps this is why he did not realize straight away, though that may be also because he has not been raised to acknowledge that fire for a man- he doesn't feeling its calming warmth until one day, he looks up and the man across from him is everything that he has ever wanted, everything that makes him feel safe, every thing that makes him feel loved. It is a hard realization, for he is barely 20, and has not yet learned the art of being kind, especially to himself.

Nevertheless, Graham O’Brien loves this man, with twinkling eyes and a full and gregarious laugh, loves him when they sit across from each other in pubs, loves him when they move in together to a tiny cramped flat, loves him when he grabs his hand even though they are in broad daylight, even though any number of people could see them.

He loves this man, and this man loves him and

It’s not legal

But they can pretend sometimes,

Most of the time

That they are married. That they have stood up and made that vow, and Graham is content with that.

They have lived together, eaten together, cared for their dog, an energetic puppy that they call Lola, together. For three years they have loved each other, when the diagnosis is confirmed. There is no denying it, no fighting it. He is dying.

And the light in his eyes grows dimmer

And his laugh becomes a little less full

And Graham sits by his bedside and curses the world for taking his most precious thing away.

"I did not know him as well as some of you" he says at the funeral and it is true, but it doesn't matter, because he loved him, fully and deeply and he lost him and now – well, he doesn't know now.

He moves away, can't stand to be near the memory of the places that they loved together, can't stand to walk down the sidewalks without the feeling of his hand sneaking into his own.

His new life is a solitary one. Lola is the only companion he needs, he reckons, and she’s ask the questions that people would, if he allowed them too close.

He starts driving busses

And sometimes he sees them, young men sitting just a little too close, eyes only for each other

Women with their pinkies entwined just over the crease between the seats

And the longing springs up in him

He remembers that love.

6 years after he has buried his love, he notices the first grey hair on Lola's muzzle and he breaks down. He takes the only sick day that he ever takes in 30 years.

6 years after that she dies. He does not get another dog.

When he gets his diagnosis, it seems like a cruel trick.

He cries sometimes, and once, when his chemo nurse asks him, he cannot help but tell her about the man he had loved, the man who had died from a different incurable illness, so long ago now. They hadn’t been able to fight that one – they couldn’t fight this one either.

She is kind, and she talks to him more after that

and her eyes are always smiling and when she laughs it is not gregarious but rather a warm low chuckle. They find camaraderie in the loves they have had – Grace tells him of her husband, and the woman she loved before that. He does not know when this fire is lit, that same low kindling that he had kept burning for his love not erased or put out, but supplemented by the love he feels for her.

He loves her and she loves him

And they get married, with Graces family present, and no one from his

They don't have to pretend.

They are married

They have lived together, and eaten together, and they do not have a dog, but Graham has all but adopted Grace's grandson. For three years they have loved each other when Grace is torn from him.

His death had been slow, and excruciating, but Grace's was immediate, and inconceivable.

He sits beside her coffin and curses the world for taking away all the things that he had ever loved.

He runs away this time too, though this time his escape is a little less lonely. He follows a mad woman with twinkling eyes that remind him of _him_ , and a kindness that reminds him of Grace, and instead of escaping to Sheffield, he escapes to the whole universe.

He looks at Ryan sometimes and remembers a boy, barely 20, who was scared to be kind to himself but did it anyways. He’s lost so much since then.

But he looks at Ryan, and Yaz, both 19 and full of contagious hope, and at the Doctor, impossibly old and yet impossibly kind and he thinks that maybe - just maybe - he didn't lose everything.

That maybe, if he can love them, they will know it, and that will make the world – the universe – just a little bit brighter.

And the fire keeps burning for those that he had loved even when they have gone, fed by his love for his grandson, and for Yaz, and for the woman that united them.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I made myself cry writing this.  
> A departure from my usual style, but I had this idea after watching the latest episode and i sat down and just wrote the whole thing.  
> Unbeta-ed  
> Title from Florence & the Machine's Big God


End file.
